


哀悼

by thesickwife



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 09:10:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6848395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesickwife/pseuds/thesickwife
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ayato needs Hinami's help reading kanji.</p>
            </blockquote>





	哀悼

“Hinami,” she heard Ayato’s voice behind her say. Her spine jumped, and she fumbled her book, whirling around.

“Ayato-kun, you scared me!” she exclaimed. He actually recoiled, taking a step back, and held his hands up in front of his chest defensively. There was a book grasped in one.

“Ah, sorry,” he said, scratching his head. “I just needed some help, um, reading. I’m not as bad as Naki, but I never really learned to read many kanji.”

Hinami smiled softly, and beckoned him with one hand over to the couch where she had been reading. He strode over to the couch nonchalantly, and she noticed how much longer his legs were than they once had been. _So I’ve been Aogiri that long, huh …_

Ayato sat down on the right side of the couch, leaving a whole cushion of space between them, which she found a bit strange. She said nothing about it. He produced the book, then pointed to a word on a page. “There,” he prompted.

Hinami leaned in closer to the book, and Ayato saw her eyes first sharpen in recognition, then soften. “Ah,” she said, “ _aitou_ … it means ‘grief.’ Sadness at a person’s death.”

He could tell there was something she wasn’t saying. “What is it,” he forced out. She looked a little intimidated, but he couldn’t take it back, phrase it more softly for her, somehow. He wondered why he wanted to.

Hinami smiled wanly. “It just reminds me of my mother.” _Oh._ He thought back. _She’s mentioned her mother before …_ He remembered the sight of the tear that had rolled down her cheek, eyes hidden by her bangs. _"I wish I were strong."_ Something in his chest tugged.

“Do you,” Ayato started, “want to talk about her? It’s okay if you don’t, but …” She looked startled at this, for some reason, and it irked him. “What? What is it?”

“Nothing!” Hinami said. “It’s nothing.” This time it was she who recoiled. “It just makes me sad, to think of her that way. That I have to be sad when I think about her, because she wouldn’t want me to be. She would want me to be happy.” Her voice choked a little on the last few words.

They sat in silence at that. Ayato stared straight in front of him, carefully keeping her out of his line of sight. _I wonder if she’s crying. Stupid._

Hinami looked at him, searching for something. She could hear him grinding his teeth. He finally spoke. “Was it the Doves? What were their names?”

She blinked. “Why do you want to know that?”

“So somebody can do something about it instead of just waiting around for them to kill us all,” he spat out. His eyes were furious, but Hinami just stared for a couple of moments before laughing, to his astonishment.

“What’s so fucking funny?”

“Nothing! Nothing. It’s just, you’re just like Onee-chan….” Hinami said. “She wanted to … to do something about it, too. She already killed him. It’s okay. I didn’t want her to, but she did it anyway. To protect me.”

Ayato mulled over that, but said nothing. It pissed him off, the way she kept projecting his stupid fucking sister onto him. Like they were anything alike; like she wasn’t in Aogiri now, not with those pacifist idiots at Anteiku who mixed with _humans_. It stuck in his craw, how Aneki had pretended to be one of them, living as a human in the light instead of fighting back. Like being born a ghoul was anything she should _have_ to hide, in a world that wasn’t all wrong. Just sitting on her heels and biding her time until she made a mistake, like it wasn’t inevitable. That’s when the Ghoul Investigators would come in a pack to slaughter her like cowards, once every human in her stupid little lie of a life knew what she was and turned on her like _that_. Especially her precious little human friend. He was sure she would have sung all of Aneki’s secrets like a bird when the humans came to her with the news. Just like what happened to Dad.

“What about yours?” Hinami asked with some trepidation, snapping him back into reality. “Your mother, I mean. Onee-chan never talked about her …” She trailed off, then looked down at her hands.

He blinked, once, twice. What was her deal? Looking at her, he could tell she wanted to take the words back, and before he knew it he was saying, “I don’t really even remember her. She died when I was little. She had light hair. I got her kagune, I know that much.” Hinami thought that he seemed to be thinking as he went along, and didn’t want him to stop.

Ayato paused. “My dad talked about her a lot, though. I know that the Doves killed her.” He barked out a laugh. “They got him too. I guess the weak idiots deserved each other.“

“How can you talk like that about your own parents?” Hinami interjected. She looked as aghast as he’d ever seen her, hands balled into little fists at her waist and eyebrows drawn tight over her big brown eyes. It was almost cute, like a little kid trying to act tough.

“What’s wrong with calling a spade a spade?” Ayato frowned. Who did she think she was, telling him what he could and couldn’t say about his own “family,” pathetic as they had been? “They were stupid. They tried to blend in with the humans. They spat on who they really were, and they got what was coming to them. Didn’t your parents learn the same lesson, in the end?”

Glancing over at her, Hinami seemed to have gone from angry to at the edge of tears, and he suddenly felt stupid, like he’d done something wrong. _Why does talking to her always make me feel like this_ , he wondered to himself, grinding his teeth again. Still, he couldn’t just … apologize, or something. _She_ was the delusional one here. He was just trying to snap her out of it. She had to come to her senses about humans sooner or later, if she wanted to survive in Aogiri. He was just trying to help. Why didn’t she see that by now?

“My dad told us to live like humans,” Ayato began slowly. The words were well-known to him, rolling easily along the grooves worn into his mind after so many years. “But he wouldn’t have died if we hadn’t gotten involved with humans in the first place.” Hinami clammed up at that, and he felt a small, vicious satisfaction. “He was weak. If he had been stronger, he would’ve killed the Doves that came for him, and my sister and I wouldn’t have lived the life that we lived. Even a little kid could figure out that much.”

He fixed her with the side of his dark eye, and she felt a shiver run down her spine. _How can Ayato-kun can be so like Onee-chan sometimes, but so different when he gets like this,_ she thought sadly. Sometimes the cruelty came out in him and she had to wonder if he was only living on to cause pain to others, because it seemed to be the only thing he enjoyed.

“I’m sorry that your father died,” Hinami began awkwardly, “but I just know that I wouldn’t talk about my mother and father like you do. It would feel like disrespecting their memory, as their daughter.” Ayato stared at her, silent. “I just think that since your parents loved you, you should remember them with a little more love. Like they'd want you to.”

He scoffed, “Love doesn’t do shit for you once you’re dead,” and got to his feet, sticking his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You would do well to learn that before they get you too.”

Hinami said nothing as he left the room, slamming the door. She took out her clover hairpin, adjusted her bangs, and put it back in, then scooted back into the couch to hug her knees to her chest. She laid down on her side and closed her eyes.


End file.
